Electric companies hope big switch goes unnoticed

Wednesday

Oct 27, 2010 at 12:25 AM

Elliott Blackburn

Lubbock will become a power monopoly this weekend, but officials hope residents don't notice much more than a new name on next month's bill.

Xcel Energy and Lubbock Power & Light will finish the final, formal touches on a deal that leaves the city-owned power company the exclusive business over most of Lubbock, upending decades of competition between commercial and municipal power.

The move represents such a show of fiscal strength that a bond rating company upgraded a city utility once slated for junk status to AA- - nearing the fiscal reliability of Lubbock itself.

The upgrade helped drop estimated total costs of the deal from $110 million to $96.4 million, based on insurance savings and other cut costs, Lubbock Chief Financial Officer Andy Burcham said.

LP&L's business office will shut down Friday to handle the influx of more than 21,000 new addresses into their billing system. Meter readers who have shadowed their private-sector peers will swarm the city over the weekend to give a final read, and then those customers will pay water, sewer and electricity all to one supplier.

"Most customers that just take electricity and pay their bill won't really see any kind of change," Reeves said. "But there are customers that are taking advantage of specific products and services that we began notifying earlier."

The company alerted customers with life support equipment and tax exempt statuses in September to make their statuses known to LP&L. Bank information, Social Security numbers and birthdays will not transfer to the municipal power company, so customers who use services such as automatic deduction will have to provide the information to LP&L.

Customers who have averaged their monthly bill over the course of the year won't transfer that program, either. Such customers will pay the balance of their energy costs - located in the upper right- hand corner of an Xcel paper bill or available via the company's customer service number - when they receive a final bill in November.

Xcel customers switching over to LP&L will be exempt from new requirements to pay a deposit. But that exemption only lasts until a customer's first disconnection for non-payment.

LP&L will leave the Xcel meters in place, for now, and customers won't see any major changes to the power lines criss-crossing the town for months or years, LP&L spokesman Chris Sims said.

But some Xcel customers will still have a bit of equipment as a memento of their former electric provider.

Customers on the Saver Switch program - an air-conditioning regulating program that offered a discount - won't find anything similar at LP&L.

But Xcel didn't have any plans to retrieve the devices attached to air conditioners around town, Reeves said.

"They'll be removed from the system, but we won't actually send anyone around to collect the devices," Reeves said.